


the heroine of the story

by valkyrierising



Category: Korean Drama, 어쩌다 발견한 하루 | Extraordinary You (TV)
Genre: Gen, Metafiction, nam joo/joo da's relationship is referenced in the way of how joo da feels about, referenced joo da/do hwa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:41:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27892495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valkyrierising/pseuds/valkyrierising
Summary: She sits back in her garden and just… is. She can breathe easy now. There is something demented about the fact that this is a life that’s already predestined for her. She flexes her hands within her glove, wishing she could have the book that Dried Squid Fairy and Eun Dan Oh fought over. She didn’t need the specifics but she wanted to sit with it - to hold it. It exists as proof: she might be a character in a book, but she is real. Everything she has feltisreal to her, therefore sheis. Some book can't take that away.
Relationships: Oh Nam Joo/Yeo Joo Da
Comments: 6
Kudos: 6
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	the heroine of the story

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trashsshi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashsshi/gifts).



The day brightens as she bends over her garden and pulls some more weeds. The sun seems to get hotter if the sweat beginning to form at the back of her neck is any indication, despite the forecast of the day promising an overcast sky. She’s always working but she’s never been tired - one of the perks of being a character in a manhwa, she supposes, is the fact that exhaustion is never something she has to worry about until she needs to faint in front of someone to gain pity. She stares hard at the flower bed that has been wilting under the transition to fall but still summer sky. The flowers drooping make themselves upright. She smiles. The story bends to her will now; she can tolerate the hatred the girls give her when she knows at the end of the day, she’s the main character. No matter what happens, she’s set. There’s a freeness that comes with that knowledge; even though she’s doomed to be unfairly hated and will always be rescued by the love interest, she is untouchable as she is the main character. 

She’s already acquired the love of Oh Nam Ju, and if the book is correct, she’s set to be married to him once they graduate. She wonders what the appeal of marrying your first love is - even if she does find him handsome and something tugs at her heart when she sees him. It’s a bit childish if she thinks too hard; the book is too saccharine. Her mother had always told her to marry for love, and she thinks maybe she can grow to love Nam Ju in time. However, she's not concerned with love, when she needs to take care of her grandma and to pay the bills on time.

It doesn’t really matter that life isn’t going the way she thought, because from her glimpse into the book, she is rewarded. In time, but every setback is rewarded. It’s nice to have her fate be set. She's secured her future and it’s one less problem to think about. There were moments where she wasn't quite sure if it was worth it. This is a rope to climb out of the hole she landed in when her parents dead. It's enough for her to hold onto that she can focus on what she gets to do after - she never imagined she'd be able to go to university, to be able to care for her grandmother. There’s a bleakness in knowing that her choices are preset, but it’s not like life up until now had been easy. She’s never had the luxury to ease up on her drive; she’s had to work to be able to graduate from a good high school, to make sure she enters a good university and to secure her grandmother's survival with surgery. She couldn't bear the thought of being made an orphan twice over. It was easier to set goals and focus on completing them as those were a better distraction than wallowing in the sadness of her parent’s death or her mother's condition.

She sits back in her garden and just… is. She can breathe easy now. There is something demented about the fact that this is a life that’s already predestined for her. She flexes her hands within her glove, wishing she could have the book that Dried Squid Fairy and Eun Dan Oh fought over. She didn’t need the specifics but she wanted to sit with it - to hold it. It exists as proof: she might be a character in a book, but she _is_ real. Everything she has felt is real to her, therefore she _is._ Some book can't take that away. 

It wasn’t intentional, and not possible, but the day that she found out the book exists is the day after Lee Do Hwa had intervened during Oh Nam Ju's confession. It struck her odd that the days leading up to the party, she felt something pulling her like a string to keep going to school, to keep walking into Nam Ju's path. The windows outside had gone dark for a brief moment that she wondered if there would be a thunderstorm and all of a sudden, Lee Do Hwa wasn’t there. She and Nam Ju are still there. He’s confessing and even though her brain feels like she's been rewound like a video, where she sees the same scene play out again but with Nam Ju in front of her, her heart still skips a beat. She’s done this before but she still holds her breath, exhaling to accept the confession. 

It is the next day and she's coming out from one of the rooms cleaning the blackboard erases when she hears the yelling. She halts, the erasers deceptively heavy once stacked as she realizes half the day had gone past already. Was she so tired that she didn’t realize when she went to bed, woke up and came to class. Her feet falter in the hallway of the school kitchen as she hears the two voices rise up again. 

"It's dangerous," she moves ahead. Dried Squid Fairy? She nears closer to the edge to hear them.

"I won't be at anyone's mercy. This is _my_ life," Eun Dan Oh responds. 

"It's not your life! We don't have lives, we're just _characters!_ " She hears a crash of metal and all of a sudden, Dan Oh is running out of the kitchen with Dried Squid Fairy hot on her heels. She stares, wondering when on earth Dan Oh had befriended Dried Squid Fairy they were close enough to talk so casual to each other. The pink book lies on the floor like an invitation from meters away. She inches closer, just to see if anyone will come by or they will return. When she’s sure, she drops the eraser box on the floor outside and sprints inside to pick up the book. Her eyes roam across the cover, Secret, splashed over the front. She flips ahead and sees - her running into Oh Nam Ju? She stares at the pages, reading more and more as the details of her life are echoed within the novel. She throws it on the floor and kicks it for good measure, hoping that this is just the result of sleep deprivation. She’s not actually living the life of a book is she?

It takes her days of careful studying to make sure she isn't crazy. Dan Oh and Do Hwa come in contact with her multiple times; she assumed it was overtures of friendship, but she pays attention to the words. They are trying to befriend her, but they talk mostly of fate and making your own.

“You don’t have to be bullied by those girls,” Dan Oh says earnestly. “You can tell them to screw off.”

“Dan Oh,” Do Hwa says. “We also have to be careful, remember the writer makes your heart act up as punishment.” 

“Forget my heart,” she slaps her hands at him. “Listen. You don’t have to just be a puppet.” She thinks about it before she smiles at them and gestures at lunch. She is met with crestfallen ones on theirs. She just shrugs and continues eating her lunch, keeping that note about the author punishing them. Is that why her heart monitor has been recently beeping? It worries her sometimes, how Dan Oh is so full of life but that watch is a visible reminder that she is living a different life than the rest of the classmates. She wants to ask more, to know more, but... something holds her back. This life is not always good, but it is hers. Dan Oh is forcibly dragging Do Hwa from the table they accosted her at. They really were in a book... and the thing that matters most to her is that she skipped to the end, where she saw herself. That's so... twisted? Confusing? It explains a lot about the school though, and how she seems to be the only scholarship student, and the stipulations the scholarship had.

She pays attention to Dan Oh though, when she’s changing the story in her own way and how every action has a consequence. She falls down stairs and is put into sports that exacerbate her heart. She grimaces when she falls onto her knee, when Baek Kyung is cruel to her. She admires Dan Oh’s resolve even if she worries for the other girl. That her life is at the mercy of an author is maddening, she thinks, shredding one of the weeds in her hand into smaller pieces. She struggled going to work and going to class, wondering if there would ever be a day that she didn't have to work to survive; finding out that someone else is controlling her life is comforting and a prison. Finding out that Dan Oh isn't actually sick either but made to be by an author is another level of disturbing to her. All things considered, being a book character isn't the weirdest thing but it puts everything into perspective: her life doesn't always have to be like this. She can make a way out. As the main character, she gets the privileges of having lucky occurrences pass her. However, she must also suffer the jealousy and ire of others. It's infuriating to be honest; she's just existing. It's not her fault that Oh Nam Ju, leader of A3, had fallen for her. It's almost hilarious in a way though, that the love of Oh Nam Ju is what she needs. After all that she'd been through, the fact that all she needs is to fall in love because the way this particular story goes is that her first love will fall so deeply in love with her they want to marry and take care of her is so very funny. She'd been looking out for herself a lot longer than this. 

Everything in her life has already been set and when she dwells on it, she hates the fact that nothing she can do can change the fate that occurred to her parents. They didn’t deserve to be treated as fodder. She'd seen Dan Oh and the extra change the story - unwittingly throwing all of them further into a story where the stakes are real and she might actually die. Even Do Hwa, who keeps staring at her with those eyes, goes along with her plans to finish the story of main character. Her heart races in a different way with Do Hwa. His kindness is electric to her in a way that isn’t the same as Nam Ju. Kindness without the surly, overbearing way Nam Ju gets when he does something nice for her is something she treasures. Still, she knows that he's the second lead and they cannot be but she envies him and Dan Oh and the extra - Haru - for disregarding the rules. She's scared for Dan Oh every day though, but it’s hard that the caution is tempered with envy and jealousy that they’re so willing to throw themselves against the story. They were blessed in a way she was not - their dilemmas are of themselves whereas hers are of elements that are directly impacted by choices she makes. Despite everything, the author cannot take away what she has endured - her feelings, her thoughts, her trauma - as _just_ stuff a character would say. 

The story will remain the same. She will find a way to make this work despite her interference because her future is set, but she needs to make sure it is fulfilled. She gets up from the garden and discards the weeds she has thoroughly shred while thinking. The camellias remain in bloom as she gets ready for another day of holding her own within school.

**Author's Note:**

> happy yuletide giftee! i hope you enjoyed this as much as i had fun trying to break down the meta nature of the show with such a complex character that was The Heroine, joo da.


End file.
